


A Kenning of Tricksters

by Equinoctia



Category: American Gods (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Gets a Hug, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Memories of torture, Poor Loki (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, being found alone and injured, physical injury, severe exhaustion, though only metaphorically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25381570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Equinoctia/pseuds/Equinoctia
Summary: Poor old Loki keeps on falling through space and into the clutches of powerful beings.After being strangled and thrown away by Thanos, apparently dead, Loki awakes on a different Earth from the planet he's visited before. He is found by another Odin, one with whom he might have more in common. But trust is never simple for tricksters.Title may change, as it's a bit obscure. (It's supposed to be a pun and an invented collective noun, via the Scots/Northern English meanings of 'to ken' and the Old Norse figures of speech.)
Relationships: Loki (Marvel) & Mr. Wednesday (American Gods), Shadow Moon & Mr. Wednesday (American Gods)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	A Kenning of Tricksters

**Author's Note:**

> NB. Loki can't talk much in this chapter.
> 
> \- I'm pretty new to serious fandom, and I've recently read a lot of Loki fans say what a raw deal he got from his adoptive parents, especially Odin (the "Odin's A+ parenting" tag!), and how Loki must have been affected by Thanos' torture.  
> \- MCU Odin seems to be rooted entirely in the warrior aspect of Norse Odin. Meanwhile, Mr. Wednesday is almost all trickster. So the most famous contemporary portrayals of the god split his major aspects between two universes. MCU Odin doesn't even seem quite like _Odin_ to me, because he's missing such an important part of his personality; he's kind of a different character with the same name.  
> \- MCU Loki apparently dies by strangulation. Norse Odin gained his wisdom in an ordeal by hanging. (That's also part of Mr. Wednesday's backstory.) This looks to me like a parallel or a potential setup for something.  
> \- These observations came together in a story idea when I was replying to a three-year-old comment thread about Odin under Chapter 7 of Misreall's fic [The Road to Hel is Paved with Misunderstandings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591122/chapters/21625853) (part of a wonderful AU series which I would highly recommend. Misreall's work is the most entertaining comic fantasy I've read since I last finished a Ben Aaronovitch novel. And it's also much hotter!)  
> \- I was surprised how few AG/MCU crossover fics there were, and in particular that there was so little about Loki and Mr Wednesday. (At time of writing this note there were 0 results for every permutation of & and / which I tried.) There should be more fics about them, especially given all the discussion about MCU Loki and father figures.

He awoke lying on his back in mud, under torrential rain. His neck and head hurt. A lot. 

The mud seeped everywhere, repulsively. This filthy night looked nothing like Valhalla.

Worse, an older man was standing over him.

Not another one. 

Odin. Thanos. The Grandmaster. Thanos again. A litany of old men confining him and torturing him. He was supposed to be the great and glorious GOD of mischief and lies. Not a pawn thrown from one ageing tyrant to another. He was supposed to be controlling others and sparking their schemes. 

And it went right back to the beginning, older men trying to toy with his life. Laufey had abandoned him to fate. Odin had let him grow up thinking he was someone he was not. He had had enough of them, forever. But here was another.

Exhaustion permeated Loki to the marrow, and then the marrow itself ached. It was as if every cell of his body had had enough. He didn't think any major bones were broken, or any nerves severed - he could feel everything - but essentially, existentially, he couldn't move.

The seidr was barely glimmering. It was a fraction out of reach, like it was a centimetre away from him, everywhere around him, whenever he tried. There was a worrying intimation of bluntness in it, too. But he would gather his strength and sharpness soon, he told himself. 

This individual didn't look anywhere near as formidable as Thanos. He must be six inches shorter than Loki. If Loki could just rest a little more, he'd see him off in an instant. Just a few minutes.

"So, another one of us has arrived," drawled the man. "One from a parallel dimension. Unusual. A first, in fact." 

Loki meant to ask what he was talking about, and where he was. What came out was merely "Wha..?" his lips barely moving.

"I'm Mr Wednesday. And you look like you could do with a proper rest, son. Need to get you cleaned up. There's a motel I know. But we need to get you to my car first." He yelled into the distance in another direction, "Shadow!"

Formidable, athletic footsteps approached, splashing. Loki lay there, eyes half open, trying to make himself do something, but too tired to try. His fingers and limbs could move, but trying to move them more than a little to test them … the range of desirable movement felt so small it was almost like they were encased in something, as well as drained.

"Take this guy to the car. Any sheets and blankets we've got in the trunk, put them down on the back seat before he goes in."

"But _I_ have to get my clothes caked in mud carrying him there?" There was the exasperated sigh of a man who refuses to be taken for granted, and who is perpetually on the verge of handing in his notice. "Who is he, anyway?"

"A half-dead god from another dimension."

"From another dimension? So an alien? An alien god?"

"He was one of us, a god, to another Earth in a parallel universe. Something extraordinarily powerful propelled him out of his own universe, and he's ended up in ours."

So this was Midgard _again_ , but a different Midgard. And the older man was some sort of god here. Or were both of them? Loki wanted to explain that the younger, bigger man was also right, that he was an alien as far as the Midgardians were concerned, as well as a god. He would tell him later. The men sounded like they might even be helpful. Perhaps they did want to care for him. 

If they weren't going to conduct experiments on him like von Doom's. Or chop him up into magical relics. _Clean_ magical relics. It would not be his first time dissected, and at least this time it might be over relatively quickly. The everlasting screeching all-pervading pain of his months in suspension by Thanos ripped through his mind, before he managed to push it back. He was still that strong. He did not have a thousand years of magical expertise and mental training for nothing. He could still tell himself it was no longer happening, because although the echoes of those pains were there when he remembered it, they were echoes, and its full force was no longer present. 

But perhaps this was one of those interludes where he got respite from all the torture and imprisonment.

Strong hands slid under his back and one thigh in the mud, then paused and moved back. The man was not as big as Thor, but not far off, and darker skinned and bald. He took hold of Loki's fingertips. "Can you squeeze my hand? Need to see how injured you are." 

Loki squeezed. Not the sort of iron grip with which it might be fun to frighten this bulky man, but enough to show he was alive.

"And push your foot against me?" Loki could also do this, albeit feebly by his usual standards. "He's not paralysed, but his neck's injured. We should still put something under it. A board or something."

"We got anything bigger than the road atlas?" asked the first man.

"Don't think so. It would be better if I drove the car up closer. But then it risks getting stuck. You need an SUV."

"If we can get him better, he could be very useful in the war. He's powerful, this one, even if his power is mostly drained right now, and even if he might not be at full strength in this dimension. He's worth the risk."

So they _were_ going to look after him. His warrior blood thrilled to the idea of a war. A lot less so to being 'useful' to yet another old man. He could always disappear when he had healed somewhat, and strike out on his own, as was his right as a god. As he needed to. He would pull some strings himself, this time. Stir up chaos in their war and lose himself in it.

Feet squelched. The car revved and spattered and stopped. Doors and trunk unlocked. Under his head slid a large, thin book that extended down to the bottom of his shoulder blades. Flimsy metal spirals pressed into his leather coat as they filled up with mud.

"I'll hold this," said the old man. "You lift the rest of him."

Loki considered trying to tell them his spine didn't seem to be broken, but if it was anything like his previous attempt to speak to them, it was pointless for now. And because it wasn't broken, they weren't doing him any harm. He could stop trying and rest. He had never wanted to do _nothing_ so much in his life. For a while, it might even be safe to. He hoped so. How close was their war?

He had to bend his legs to fit in the back seat of their car. They had been mightily relieved to see he could do that himself once the young man had started lightly pushing up the backs of his knees. Leaning his legs on the back seat, his toes against the door, he could still rest.

But this was the car of a god? It was dank and old and beige. Like the car of a poor mortal, he presumed, though he had never had cause to contemplate those before.  
The men got into the front of the car, and there was brief shuffling as they settled themselves.

"Urgh, black coffee going cold", said the older one. The aroma of cheap thin coffee wafted through the car from the re-opened cup. "But not far to the motel."

The tyres span for a few seconds in the mud, but then hit traction, and they lurched and skidded forth, until the car was coasting on the road that stretched out into the flat midwestern night.

Loki was woken by the car stopping. He heard that they wanted take him in through the fire door, and that the old man was glad he'd taken a couple of rooms near it.

The corridor and hotel room were, if anything, even more dingy and threadbare than the car. Yet to Loki, who had never seen such places on Midgard before, they were almost exotic. Exotic if they were only temporary, that is. He was getting the impression they weren't for these two.

The synthetic counterpane was unpleasantly slippery under his leather coat, even with the mud.

"Right. You wanna keep that muddy Renaissance Faire garb on? Or wear borrowed clothes? Or go buck naked? Anything of mine is gonna be too short for you, and Shadow needs his change of clothes himself. We'll see if you're up to washing yourself in the morning."

Loki's clothes were, at present, all he had left of his life as he had known it. Some of that life had been horrendous, but his clothes, like his seidr, were among the things that felt truly his. He wasn't giving them up, no matter how grubby he was right now. He mustered the energy to cross his arms and pull his coat tight. "This," he hissed quietly.

"Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. I think you heard what we were saying out there. You're on another Earth now. You can tell me later exactly how you got here. My insight only stretches so far."

Wednesday sat down, slouched, on the edge of another single bed at the opposite side of the room, as he continued talking. 

"I have some healing powers, but I've never seen magics from your dimension before. I don't want to risk a clash, and doing more damage when you're already this drained. You usually have pretty good self-healing abilities of your own, if I'm reading you right. 

How you feeling anyway, son?" 

"Yeaw," the sound came out through Loki's raw, bruised voicebox. "Who?" He raised a hand and pointed towards Wednesday.

"Here, I am known as Mr. Wednesday, and sometimes in our world of gods and believers as Odin." 

Loki made a nasal groan as the speech continued over him. Odin again. A different dimension, and still he ended up found by Odin.

"But you may know my counterparts as Wotan, the Allfather, _Gizurr, Grimnir, Ginnarr, Fjölnir, Fengr, Gangleri, Glapsviðr, Hleifruðr, Valföðr, Olgr, Óski. Farmr galga. Hangaguð, Farmögnuðr. Hrafnaguð, Haptsönirî_. I have many names." 

Typical god, liked to go on about himself and list his names. But this was a different kind of Odin. This was an Odin more like himself. This was an Odin apparently promising things he, Loki, needed: _Haptsönirî_ , the loosener of fetters. And who knew the pain he still felt from Thanos' strangulation: _Farmr galga, Hangaguð_ , gallows' burden, the god of the hanged. For the first time, he properly noticed this Odin's black curly hair - like his own if he had worn it shorter. But the Grandmaster had also been a trickster of sorts. Loki knew his own trickster kind, and that they could never truly be trusted. This Odin was telling him what he wanted to hear.

This was too complicated to transform into appropriate words right now. But words were returning. He thought he could feel himself starting to heal, though much more slowly than on Asgard.

"Loki. Prince... of Asgard." He mumbled, then paused, hoping pain would subside a little. But he realised it would take longer than that, so he kept on because it was only three words. "God of Mischief."

"Well, Loki. Welcome. Looks like we got ourselves a duplicate in the set. But the trickster energy is strong in this land. There's no shortage of action for us here. Especially a handsome young guy like you. Our Loki may be in for some stiff competition. You'll need to get used to not being a prince, though. Our lives are … not what they were. Now you must sleep and, I hope, heal." Wednesday picked up a set of pyjamas from his bed, then clicked the light-switch cord off.

**Author's Note:**

> All those names of Odin, in order:  
> Riddler; Hooded or Masked One; Deceiver; Wise One, concealer, "the One who is many"; Fetcher or Catcher; Wanderer or Wayweary; Swift in Deceit, Swift Tricker, Maddener, Wise in magical spells; Wayfinder; Father of the Slain; Protector, Hawk; God of Wishes, Wished For [all from Óðins nöfn, part of the Skáldskaparmál section of the Prose Edda. This is the order these names appear in the poem, scattered at intervals]. Gallows' Burden [Wikipedia - unsourced]. God of the Hanged, Journey Empowerer [elsewhere in Skáldskaparmál]. Raven God [Gylfaginning]. Fetter Loosener [Wikipedia -unsourced].
> 
> \- There are a lot of tricksters both among the characters of _American Gods_ and in Native tradition. The idea of it as a land where the trickster spiritual ethos is strong comes from neopagan authors, and feels more coherent to me than the AG novel's "not a good country for gods". 
> 
> \- I was thinking about Mr Wednesday's road trips having the soundtrack of The KLF's _Chill Out_ (a very laid-back ambient album with track titles telling the story of an American road trip, by a British band famous as pranksters), and I had the idea of making a reference to the first track in this chapter. But I couldn't bring myself to land Loki in such a hot place as South Texas. He's miserable enough already. So there's just Mr Wednesday's cup of black coffee that's been going cold in the car, from a later track.
> 
> \- The ending of this chapter is very similar to first chapter I wrote last week (it ends with an exhausted character who's been transported to another dimension falling asleep in their day clothes, just alone), but heck I'm new to all this and I have to start somewhere. I had thought this concept was going to be a series of vignettes, but then Shadow was obviously over there, and Loki was going to have to get used to accepting a bunch of other people and gods (because he isn't allowed to squeeze Shadow out, even if he is in need of a father figure himself).


End file.
